


Take A Deep Breath (Let It Out)

by Krasimer



Series: Don't Take My Sunshine Away [22]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angela "Mercy" Ziegler is an Angel, Dad Soldier: 76 | Jack Morrison, Implied Junkrat | Jamison Fawkes/Roadhog | Mako Rutledge, Implied Soldier: 76 | Jack Morrison/Reaper | Gabriel Reyes - Freeform, Implied Widowmaker | Amelie Lacroix/Lena "Tracer" Oxton, Junkrat | Jamison Fawkes is a Little Shit, Multi, Overwatch Agent Widowmaker | Amélie Lacroix, Post-Talon Widowmaker | Amélie Lacroix, Protective Gabriel, Protective Roadhog | Mako Rutledge, Protective Soldier: 76 | Jack Morrison, Sombra (Overwatch) is a Little Shit, Team as Family, Widowmaker | Amélie Lacroix Redemption
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-05
Updated: 2018-01-05
Packaged: 2019-02-28 20:59:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13279785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Krasimer/pseuds/Krasimer
Summary: “If I remember right, you can read shorthand. These papers are written in it,” Jack shrugged. “Of all the things I’ve learned over the years, you would think that would be one of them, but I just never quite found the time.”Angela smiled back at him, laughing a little. “Too busy being everything else that you are.” She flipped open the folder and started looking through the papers. “Always the soldier, then the vigilante, Jack, you-”The color drained out of her face.With it went the humor in the room and Jack felt his spine go stiff. “Angela?”Her eyes darted along the lines written on the papers, cold and professional. In that moment she was Mercy, the battlefield doctor intent on saving as many lives as she could. She was a force of her own, brutal when she needed to be, kind when it was necessary.“Mercy?” Jack questioned again.Her eyes were dark, angry, when she looked up at him. “Where did these come from?”





	Take A Deep Breath (Let It Out)

“Jack?”

He turned at the voice, seeing Angela walking towards him. “Angie,” he nodded in greeting.

“You said you needed to talk to me,” Angela’s gaze immediately went to the side of his head. “Is it related to the injuries you had to live with?” before he could answer, she was at his side and prodding gently at the small patch of scarring that lay on the spot where the shrapnel had been. “Does this hurt?” she questioned.

“My head is fine, Angie,” Jack smiled at her, then held out the folder of papers he had been wanting to show her. “This is the reason I called you here.”

“Papers?” Angela took them, frowning.

“If I remember right, you can read shorthand. These papers are written in it,” Jack shrugged. “Of all the things I’ve learned over the years, you would think that would be one of them, but I just never quite found the time.”

Angela smiled back at him, laughing a little. “Too busy being everything else that you are.” She flipped open the folder and started looking through the papers. “Always the soldier, then the vigilante, Jack, you-”

The color drained out of her face.

With it went the humor in the room and Jack felt his spine go stiff. “Angela?”

Her eyes darted along the lines written on the papers, cold and professional. In that moment she was Mercy, the battlefield doctor intent on saving as many lives as she could. She was a force of her own, brutal when she needed to be, kind when it was necessary.

“Mercy?” Jack questioned again.

Her eyes were dark, angry, when she looked up at him. “Where did these come from?”

“The mission we were on after Genji was hurt. Recovered from the files there. Why?” In response to her switching to soldier-stance, Jack felt himself following.

“These papers are talking about medical experiments,” Mercy frowned, flipping through them further. “Proposed research, methods, the science behind it all. There is a list of the dead and-” she choked on her words, her eyes going wide. “A list of the only surviving experiment. Gabriel Reyes. The list of the dead is…” she took a deep breath, shaking her head. “I will have to cross-reference the names on it.”

Jack reached a hand out to her shoulder, hesitating for a moment before making contact. “Mercy?”

“They needed to have a test subject,” Mercy – She was back to Angela now, not just the concerned doctor but the worried daughter – looked over the papers she held and frowned, tracing a finger down them. “Experimental trials, phases of test subjects, required presence of a-”

She stopped dead, her jaw going slack as her eyes ran over the words again and again.

“Angie?” Jack leaned in to peer at her face. “Angie, talk to me. Tell me what you’re seeing. Can’t help if you don’t tell me what you’re seeing.”

“Required,” she swallowed, her accent growing thicker as she stuttered over her words. “Required the presence of a heartbeat. Unable to resuscitate test patient cases zero-zero-one through zero-one-one. Skills and resources deficient. Future tests may require the assistance of Angela Ziegler.” She swallowed again, tears welling up. “Nanite healing must be acquired for Talon use. They stole my technology.”

Jack reached out for her shoulder, intending to comfort her, but she yanked herself away. “I was given the body of Gabriel Reyes,” she hissed the words out. “And told he had only died half an hour previous. They had me pour nanites into him in a vain attempt to bring him back and then they took his body out of my morgue and the next I saw him, he was a wraith on the battlefield. He was trying to murder me and my friends because we both believed I had _ruined_ him.”

“This is not your fault,” Jack drew himself up to his full height, falling back into parade rest as he studied her face. “Angie, this isn’t on you.”

“This is on Walsh,” she snarled the name out. “And those he got to-”

Angela paused, her expression turning thoughtful as she stared at the reports again. “There was a medical agent in Blackwatch,” she muttered. “Her name was Moira. I think…” she turned to her computer and started scrolling through old records. “Moira Walsh.” She looked at Jack. “They were brother and sister, by all appearances. Irish or at the very least looked Irish enough to pass.”

“Gabe has trouble these days, remembering who is on the Talon roster. Whatever they did to his emotional centers, in his brain, it affected the rest of it too.” Jack pursed his lips, his scars pulling the skin of his face in a strange way.

“ _Oui,_ ” a lilting voice came from behind them. “You must remember, you ‘ave more than one ex-Talon agent with you.”

Jack and Angela both turned, spotting Amélie where she stood at the door to the medical lab. Her arms were crossed over her chest and the intelligent anger in her eyes flashed when she nodded towards the folder Angela held. “What,” Jack looked between it and her. “I mean. You’re sure you’re feeling up to it?”

“No better time,” Amélie moved closer and held out a hand for the folder. “Lena will be busy with Winston, training on a new version of ‘er little flash of light. Keeping myself distracted is the best course of action,” she looked at the report on the pages and Jack finally realized what looked different about her.

Instead of being a shade of purple-tinted blue, her skin was an oddly pale white with her veins picked out in blues and purples. She still didn’t look normal, but it was closer than it had been. Amélie was becoming who she had been before.

And she had never just been the ballet-dancing and photography-loving wife of a sharpshooter and assassin.

Amélie LaCroix had been a force to be reckoned with and feared all on her own, long before Gerard had come into the picture. If he remembered correctly, Jack thought as he studied her, that had been part of the reason they had gotten along in the first place.

“Her name is Moira,” Amélie said after a few minutes of flipping through the pages. “She is the Talon version of you, Angela,” she snorted derisively. “At least, she is trying to be. Their faith in you is well founded, you are the best at what you do and no other could compare.” She tapped the papers again. “’Owever, Moira is the one directly behind Gabriel being ‘ow he is. I believe she used ‘im as a test subject to perfect the modifications she wished to give herself.”

Jack froze as he rolled those words over in his head. “ _What_.”

“Moira,” Amélie offered Angela the folder back. “Altered ‘erself after using Gabriel as a test subject. She wanted to know if she could make ’erself better based on the research she used ‘im for.”

“She _used him,_ ” Angela’s voice could have made the devil himself turn and flee. “To _improve_ her own body?”

“She was the one wanting ‘im back so desperately,” Amélie nodded, coming to Angela’s side and looking over the papers once more. “When you and yours took ‘im in, that is. She threw a fit when he did not return to base after a mission. Something about ‘is super-soldier modifications, I believe. Makes for a particularly good test subject.” She jerked her chin towards Jack. “When you are out on missions, I am going with you. Or you are taking one of the others that can fight without the rules you seem so fond of, soldier.”

Jack frowned at her. “Why?”

“Because if Talon wants you to replace the one you took,” Amélie’s smile was spine-tinglingly terrifying. “You fight too much on the side of good to escape their ‘old.”

 

~

 

This was, Amélie supposed, the price she was to pay for insinuating that Jack Morrison would be taken to replace Reaper.

Gabriel had overheard her telling the other soldier that and had immediately panicked. Apparently, it was something that Gabriel had been worrying about since escaping in the first place. Jack was important to him.

Jack was the most important person in the world, to him.

So she had been sent out on a mission as the one using a gun to give backup to the others on the team. Hunting down an old teammate of hers, she had also been one of the only candidates for it. Too many of the Overwatch crew had cybernetic modifications and Sombra had already taken down two of them. The Shimada she had injured was on life-support and not waking up just yet.

The ex-Vishkar agent had woken up and her cybernetic arm had needed to be removed to keep her from damaging herself. Sombra had hacked into it.

Amélie rolled her head on her neck and peered through her scope towards where the rest of the mission team was. She had been sent out with the two Australians, neither of them modified with anything that Sombra could use.

“’Ow’s it lookin’?” came the nasally voice of the smaller one.

Junkrat was a strange man.

“From ‘ere, it looks as if nothing is happening,” she answered, turning her scope towards him and smiling a little when she saw him waving. “Besides an idiot on a roof making a spectacle of himself.”

The objective was simple enough. Talon had, according to a leaked file that one of the youngest of Overwatch had managed to get, arranged a meeting between an operative and a source. The meeting was to take place on this roof.

Amélie had already sedated the source. They were in the building, in a closet. She had used a memory blocking sedative.

When they woke, they would not remember anything about what had happened, other than missing the meeting.

From her memory of how Talon operated, Amélie had been able to figure out that Sombra would be sent on this mission. There would be a group of Talon agents with her, obviously, but she would be sent into the meeting alone. The agents would be scattered across other rooftops, waiting until the meeting was over or they were needed to intervene.

Sombra hated needing them to intervene.

“Quiet down,” Roadhog’s voice was rough over the comm. “Both of you.” She could see him nudge a hand against Junkrat’s shoulder through her scope. It made her smile.

The quiet trust and hidden intimacy between them was clear to see for anyone who knew where to look for such a thing. It was not, perhaps, the most normal of relationships, but it suited them and seemed to make them both happy. Now that she was recovering, that was important to her. That was what had urged her to help Reaper in the first place.

At the time, she had wanted _someone_ to feel the warmth she could not remember feeling.

Now she has Lena.

Now Reaper is Gabriel and Gabriel has Jack.

There are so many people who have so many others. There is happiness within the strange existence they call their own. There is warmth and contentment and Amélie is just glad that she can feel it again.

The footsteps off to one side are all the warning she gets.

Cursing herself, Amélie springs to her feet from her knees and brings her rifle up to fire off a bullet into the face of the approaching Talon agent. It deflects off of what seems to be thin air and Amélie curses in a string of French that would have made her mother clean her mouth out.

Small-area shielding. Talon had been developing it when she had left.

Right.

She pirouetted and slammed one of her boot heels into his gut, sending him flying backwards. He grunted and she used the moment to press down on her comm. “Change of plans, Talon agents ‘ave arrived!” There was a half second she had to hear Junkrat and Roadhog acknowledging before she had to turn and put a bullet in her attacker’s knee.

He went down.

A heavy hit against the back of her head tells her that it has been too long since she went out into the field without a team backing her up and keeping her isolated. She felt sick as she turned and swiped a leg under her attacker’s, sending them flying off the roof and into the abyss towards the street below.

There was a ringing in her ears as she fell, then rolled and tried to stand up, immediately refocusing on where Junkrat and Roadhog were. Amélie took a deep breath and shook her head, trying to clear away the dizziness. Her comm was making a strange crackling noise that died out after a few seconds and she touched the button that would allow her to speak down the line. “’Allo?”

No response.

It only made her more nervous, especially when she hefted her rifle and looked around the area for those she was supposed to be giving backup to. The first Talon agent who had attacked her was groaning quietly, disabled and not a threat anymore, on the ground behind her.

The noise she could hear, clear in the air, made her heart just about stop.

The Australians would be fine, she told herself as she hefted her rifle up and took out an encroaching Talon agent. One shot nestled neatly between the eyes. No matter how rusty she was at looking after her own back, she was still as impressive as ever when it came to landing a hit.

One shot, one kill, after all.

She heard a shout and a small explosion and it made her whip around.

“Give me an update!” Amélie shouted down the comm line, looking through her scope. “Someone, talk to me!”

With the return of her heartbeat, so too had her anxiety and anger on missions returned. Her pulse was racing, her heart was flying in her chest, and through her scope she could see Sombra ducking and dodging around the two Australians.

It would only be a matter of minutes, at most, before she got past them and away.

“Ah,” an Irish-accented voice came from behind her and Amélie froze for barely a fraction of a second, instinct kicking in and having her gun pointed at the speaker’s head. “Oh, look at that.”

“Moira,” Amélie narrowed her eyes at her.

“I’ve caught myself a _spider_ ,” Moira’s eyes flashed dangerously, smoke coming from her clawed hands. “On the _one day_ of all days I come out onto the field, I find a spider. One that escaped my collection.” She reached forward and Amélie jerked back, rifle never moving from the target. One shot and Moira’s skull would be splattered open against the roof of the building.

She never went out alone, however, and Amélie knew that if she tried anything, she would be the one dying instead of any of the other Talon operatives. “ _Bon Dieu,”_ she hissed venomously.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Sombra come screeching to a halt, allowing Junkrat to plant a bomb on her. While she moved, she looked around as if something had caught her attention. Sombra flipped back and out of the way with just barely any time to spare and Roadhog managed to catch ahold of her. Amélie didn’t even turn her head to keep an eye on them – the edges of her vision would have to do.

“You always did have a way of keeping an eye on the playing field,” Moira smirked at her and Amélie felt a wave of anger wash over her. “I could modify you a bit more, make your eyesight perfect and multi-field. I have been playing with bionic ones that can see heat and other such things. You would be the perfect test subject.”

Amélie stood up slowly, raising her hands in the air.

“Oh?” Moira’s eyebrow rose. “Done playing as one of their heroes? Good. Overwatch is on its way out, the age of the hero is already over.”

“Ah,” Amélie laughed a little, then moved lightning-quick, the butt of her rifle slamming Moira in the face as she turned on her heel and ran for the edge of the building. “Angela Ziegler says to go to ‘ell!” she shouted back over her shoulder, diving neatly off the edge and laughing when heavily-armored arms caught her. “’Aving a good day?”

“Good enough of one,” Fareeha grinned at her from underneath her helmet, flying towards a roof that was further away. “Lena isn’t going to be pleased when she hears you’re jumping off twelve-story buildings, LaCroix.”

“She will live,” Amélie laughed again. “I will live and she will live and things will be alright.”

“Orders are to meet back at the transport,” Fareeha hovered at the edge for a moment before landing. “I am to provide air support and cover fire if necessary. Sombra has been taken into custody, her hands have been bound, and your comm line needs repairing. They were trying to contact you and you were not answering directly. We could still hear you,” she studied Amélie for a second. “Thank you for defending Angela, by the way.”

“She is the superior of the two,” Amélie shrugged and slid her rifle into the holder on her back. “And Moira ‘as _always_ pissed me off.”

Fareeha held out her arms again, resettling Amélie in them before flying to the rooftop Junkrat and Roadhog had ended up on. The bigger of the two Australians had managed to get cuffs on Sombra, something she could not hack. It covered the entirety of her hands, kept her from being able to wiggle a finger, let alone attack.

Amélie stepped out of Fareeha’s hold gracefully, running her hand across her face and back into her hair, fixing what the wind had mussed. “Sombra,” she lifted her chin up a little.

“Widowmaker,” Sombra bared her teeth in a feral snarl, narrowing her eyes. “Was told you were out of commission.”

“Ah?”

In Talon’s terms, Out of Commission meant that someone was either dead or dying. If Sombra had been told that, someone had been desperate to cover something up. Amélie smirked a little, remembering the idiot who had wired up Gabriel’s jaw, made him unable to speak or do anything to fight back.

She had stolen his supplies, not knowing why, and had carried his undoing in the secret space between her breast and her body.

“Rumors are highly exaggerated?” Sombra scoffed quietly, muttering something that Amélie recognized as a curse in Spanish. “Of course they were, no one in our field of work _stays dead._ Next you’ll tell me that Reaper is baking muffins with that damn ape.”

“Reaper ain’t bakin’,” Junkrat cackled, leaning on just his peg leg for a moment and splaying his hands like he was revealing some big surprise, jazz-hands and all. “And ya ain’t got shit ya can do to me limbs.”

He was gloating, Amélie realized after a moment.

It made her giggle.

“Your comm is down,” Roadhog grunted at her. “Tried contacting you, didn’t work.”

“Ah,” Amélie pulled it out of her ear, frowning at the small piece of tech. Now that she was actually looking at it, she could see where the wires had been severed. Part of it was dangling uselessly. “Would be why I could not hear anything.”

Roadhog grunted wordlessly, nodding. Pulling out his own, he pressed the button that would start up their transport out of the area. Fareeha nodded to them and put her helmet back on, heading for the transport. She was their pilot on this mission, after all.

“We ‘ad best get going,” Amélie gestured for them to follow her. “Another Talon operative is out here, I do not think we wish to ‘ave another run-in with her. I will tell of who she is once we are on our way.”

“I heard you over her comm,” Sombra says quietly. “Got distracted enough to be grabbed.”

It was the only admission of anything even resembling friendship that Sombra would make. “That is your own problem,” Amélie rubbed at the back of her head. With the adrenaline fading out, the pain was making itself known. The dizziness was also back. “What is not your own problem is what you ‘ave done to some Overwatch agents.”

“…Is _that_ why I’m being dragged in like a hunting trophy?” Sombra’s eyes narrowed. “Because you can’t heal two of theirs?”

Roadhog seemed to level a glare at her for a second, then picked her up in one hand and tossed her over his shoulder. Her legs kicked uselessly in the air at his back but he didn’t seem to notice. “You are being ‘dragged in’ because of how dangerous you are.” He growled out the words. When Amélie stepped in front of him, Roadhog stopped his descent from the rooftop.

“I will take this,” Amélie met Sombra’s eyes for a moment as she plucked out the comm Sombra wore. She flicked it, carelessly, onto one of the steps.

Junkrat seemed to take a great deal of excitement out of stomping on it.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> So, uh...
> 
> Tell me what you think? We've begun to reach some serious big plot points.


End file.
